


opening doors and pulling some strings

by sunsmasher



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: A knight's tale - Freeform, Crossover, Identity Reveal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 19:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11259339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: The Captive Prince A Knight’s Tale AU. Featuring the joust, an off-screen masquerade, and a reveal. With Damen in the part of William Thatcher, Laurent in the part of Lady Jocelyn, and Laurent again in the part of Geoffrey Chaucer."You would win the tournament anyway," Jokaste tells him, cold and pale and unmoved by Damen's frustration. "If you should prove your love for Prince Laurent, you shall do your worst."Beside Damen, Charls goes suddenly still.





	opening doors and pulling some strings

"You would win the tournament anyway," Jokaste tells him, cold and pale and unmoved by Damen's frustration. "If you should prove your love for Prince Laurent, you shall do your worst."

Beside Damen, Charls goes suddenly still. It would draw Damen’s attention in any other situation, to his clear blue eyes held steady, to the long blond curl brushing unnoticed against his neck. It would, if Damen is being honest, draw his attention with a certain haste.

In this situation, it does not.

“My worst. What does that mean?” he asks, as the Prince’s attendant folds her hands above her fine skirts.

“Instead of winning, to honour him with your high reputation, he asks you to act against your normal character and do badly,” Jokaste replies.

“Do badly.”

Charls is watching Jokaste with a fascination reserved normally for hawks and a very deadly kind of swordsman

“Lose, Sir Ulrich,” Jokaste says, and Charls makes a near-silent choking noise as Damen shouts, “He wants me to _lose?”_

“That sounds… out of character for His Highness,” Charls says as Damen drags a hand through his curls, seeing in his mind’s eye the trophies lost, the winnings forfeit, his standing plummeting through the ranks.

“And what would you know of His Highness’ character?” Jokaste replies, as if even the act of speaking with a common author is beneath her.

“I will not lose,” Damen says, forcing it between clenched teeth.

All of the cathedral is watching them do this, the deacon held back from his scolding only by Jokaste’s unerring glare. Damen thinks with pain of the Prince, whose glare could level armies, who had saved Damen from humiliation with a dance, who had refused to take his mask off even when the music had ended and they’d been pressed chest to chest, gasping for more breath than any mere exertion could have taken from them.

“Then you do not love him,” Jokaste replies, with a voice that cuts, and leaves them standing among the faithful.

 

* * *

 

So, he loses.

Twice.

It only costs him his ribs.

 

* * *

 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Nicaise says that night. There is a general chorus of agreement. Nikandros nods emphatically.

Normally Charls would, at this point, cuff Nicaise and tell him to watch his dirty English mouth. Damen can’t admit to understanding the relationship between his “squire” and their acquired herald/forger, but Nicaise getting cuffed upside the head appears to be a major part of it.

But Charls isn’t here right now, scribbling in one of his many notebooks while Jord fiddles with Damen’s armor and Nicaise and Nikandros trade barbs. That, much like the radiant pain in Damen’s ribs and the lingering strange looseness of his shoulder, is distracting. Oddly so.

Damen has avoided thinking about his relationship with Charls. He has pledged his love for Prince Laurent, publicly and rather frequently. Nikandros keeps a tally. The single conversation he’s had with the Prince had been like the joust, like the rush of adrenaline and triumph and just the faintest spice of fear. Dancing with him at the masquerade had left Damen giddy like a child, and he imagines losing a tournament is not the last stupid thing he will do in Laurent’s name.

He loves the Prince.

But at the same time there is Charls.

Who gambles, and swears, and dresses like a loon, and speaks with the kind of stupefying eloquence that suggests a divine inspiration, if only God were ever once so funny.

Thus he avoids thinking about it. Mostly.

“Has anyone seen Charls?” Damen asks, and Nikandros rolls his eyes with a dramatic weariness that Damen finds wholly unnecessary.

“Maybe he’s off trying to haggle with his bookkeepers,” Nicaise replies nonchalantly. “He did bet quite a lot of money on you, back when you were favored.”

Oh. An unfortunate likelihood.

“Of course, then you had to ruin us all for a _blond_ ,” Nicaise continues as Damen rises, to another of Nikandros’ firm nods. It’s the only thing they ever seem to agree upon. Damen limps out of their little tent circle with Nicaise still extolling his faults, and tries not to think about blonds.

Or, well, other blonds. He is still looking for Charls.

He spots the author himself after ten minutes of wheezing through town, checking every game of dice he passes for golden hair and a foul mouth. Charls, to Damen’s surprise, is not coming from a bar or going to a bar or making money change hands. He’s ducking down an alley in the nicer part of town.

By the time Damen turns the corner and lays eyes on him, the fight is already in full bloom.

“You will have him kill himself on the field just to satisfy some petty revenge against me,” Charls is snarling. He is snarling, for some reason, at Prince Laurent’s attendant Jokaste. The two of them are close, leaned in, fighting quietly and heatedly. In the gloom of the alley, each gesture of their pale hands leaves a streak through the air.

“Oh!” Jokaste laughs without humor. ”It’s become my fault that you have led him by the nose through six months of tournaments like a child following after sweets—”

“Some _petty revenge_ —” Charls says again, over her, teeth bared and flashing like an animal’s.

“You have abandoned your duties to run around playing commoner!” Jokaste nearly shouts. “You have left me to clean up your mess and this is the last time I will—”

“You have done nothing—” Charls starts again, hair spilling from his loosed braid to fly across his face, and that’s when Damen sees it.

“Charls?” he says, and then, like a thunderclap, like the bolt that splits the vaulted heavens, _“Laurent?”_

Laurent— Charls — _Laurent_ , spins. His hair drags out behind him like a fan, like a halo, and he's beautiful, God, he's _beautiful._

“Damianos,” he says, a thunderclap too, “You will win me this tournament tomorrow or so help me God I will _never_ dance with you again!”

It’s staggering. Damen nearly staggers. Laurent, His Highness Prince Laurent, is staring at Damen with fire in his wide blue eyes, mouth ripped back from his teeth, breathing heavily.

“Oh, Lord save us,” Jokaste says.

“You will take that prize tomorrow, do you understand me?” Laurent snaps. Jokaste is forgotten. He’s advancing on Damen with bloody purpose.

The world, for Damen, is still whirling. Laurent is Charls. Charls is Laurent. The young Prince of Arles has been riding across France with him, announcing him at tournaments, dressing in that ridiculous _coat._ The young Prince of Arles has a _gambling problem._ The young Prince of Arles is a _confounded pest_.

The young Prince of Arles helped Damen compose a love letter to the young Prince of Arles.

The young Prince of Arles is both Charls and Laurent, and he demands Damen win him a tournament.

Of all these thoughts, and there are many, and all of them very loud, one is the loudest.

“My God,” Damen laughs as Laurent arrives in his face, flushed, furious, and near enough to touch, “I— you love me!”

“Damen, you—,” Laurent starts, and then with that same fury, enough of it to cover over his confusion, “— _what?”_

“You love me!” Damen says again, hard almost to get the words out with the breadth of his grin. “And I love you! Both of you! Christ, all of you! Thank God!”

“Damen—” Laurent starts, and now the fury is gone, as is Jokaste, but the flush is still there, spreading up his cheeks and down his throat like some fine silk taking on its dye.

“Can I kiss you?” Damen says, putting his hands to Laurent’s elbows, running his hands up the stupid velvet sleeves of that stupid velvet coat. “I've been dying to. Can I kiss you?”

He knows what he sounds like. He doesn’t care. He gloriously, unabashedly doesn’t care. Laurent is looking at him like Damen has never been looked at, not by Charls, not by the Prince, not by anyone. His blue eyes are wide, his full lips half-parted. One of Damen’s hands has reached his hair, and Damen threads it between his fingers with something he thinks might be reverence.

Laurent is looking at his mouth. Damen feels it like the impact of the lance on his shoulder, brutal and thrilling.

Laurent looks up.

His small smile is entirely genuine.

“...Which one of me?” he says.

Damen laughs, low and breathless, and takes Laurent’s smooth-boned cheeks between his hands, and presses their mouths together.

“Perfect,” Damen says against Laurent’s lips, referring to just about all of it. Laurent loops his arms around Damen’s neck, pulling them back together, matching the soft movements of Damen’s mouth against his with a care that Damen would never have dared expect. The Prince is famous for taking men apart with a few choice sallies. He has _seen_ Charls do it. He imagined them both. Neither fantasy compares. Laurent’s fingers are digging into his hair, his tongue insistent in Damen’s mouth.

It’s only when Damen tries to hitch Laurent up against the brick alley wall and dislocates his shoulder again that Laurent finally pulls away. He uses this brief breathing period to call Damen a damned idiot, ruthlessly suppress his panic in a way that Damen finds intensely charming, and insinuate that it is in no way Laurent’s fault that Damen has dislocated his shoulder twice in one day.

It’s entirely Laurent’s fault. Both times. Damen beams.

“I love you so much,” Damen says.

“Stop moving would you, I’m getting the surgeon,” Laurent replies.

He still kisses Damen again before he goes. It’s utterly wonderful.

**Author's Note:**

> [ #i'll be completely honest me and emma were doing up another bullet point post about the knight's tale au bc every knight's tale au is perfect #and then i realized that this scene right here #this one in particular was the MOST perfect #and i had to write it #it was a need. a compulsion. #and so the entire bullet point post mapping out the rest of the movie #plus the extremely necessary second version featuring laurent as william and jokaste as adhemar #(YOU HAVE BEEN WEIGHED JOKASTE) #(YOU HAVE BEEN MEASURED) #(AND YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND WANTING.) #(WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD. GOD SAVE YOU; IF IT IS RIGHT THAT HE SHOULD DO SO) #anyways those are all on their way! #this. happened first. #i couldn't stop it. ](http://lambergeier.tumblr.com/post/162037288431/the-captive-prince-a-knights-tale-au-featuring)


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